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Researchers have found further evidence to support the importance of encouraging youth to eat breakfast regularly. Researchers examined the association between breakfast frequency and five-year body weight change in more than 2,200 adolescents, and the results indicate that daily breakfast eaters consumed a healthier diet and were more physically active than breakfast skippers during adolescence.

Anecdotal evidence touting the healing power of the Indian spice turmeric for psoriasis received a setback in a prospective study published in a dermatology journal stating that the low response rate of patients who ingested the active ingredient of the exotic spice was probably a result of the placebo effect.

Universal access to health care might help to overcome racial and ethnic barriers to treatment for kidney disease, suggest two new studies. During the four-year study period, there was a significant increase in the rate of "pre-emptive listing"--that is, being placed on the transplant waiting list before starting dialysis. However, the median time spent on dialysis before wait-listing was essentially unchanged.

Smoking is a known risk factor for respiratory diseases like chronic bronchitis, but genes also play a significant role in its development, according to researchers, who studied more than 40,000 Swedish twins to determine the extent to which behavior, environment and genes each play a role ion the development of chronic bronchitis.

Researchers have discovered a possible target to treat bloodstream bacterial infections. Most bacterial pathogens can invade the bloodstream, which can lead to severe sepsis, a syndrome that kills about 215,000 of the 750,000 people affected in the United States each year, according to a study in Critical Care Medicine.

Just as cells inherit genes, they also inherit a set of instructions that tell genes when to become active, in which tissues and to what extent. Now, researchers have built a device that, by allowing scientists to turn genes on and off in actively multiplying budding yeast cells, will help them figure out more precisely than before how genes and proteins interact with one another and how these interactions drive cellular functions.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have identified a gene in Asian monkeys that may have evolved as a defense against lentiviruses, the group of viruses that includes HIV. The study suggests that AIDS is not a new epidemic.

Researchers have found a gene responsible for a particularly debilitating form of epilepsy that also leads to kidney failure. Epilepsy is overall a common condition, affecting some two percent of people. The genetics behind the seizure disorder are often complex. However, progressive myoclonus epilepsies, which Berkovic said can be quite disabling and tend to get worse over time, usually have a simpler, Mendelian pattern of inheritance caused by a variety of single genes.

Researchers have determined that the level, or saturation, of oxygen in blood could be used to identify children with sickle cell anemia who are at an increased risk of stroke. In a related study, they have also found that a published method used to predict severe complications of the disease may not be adequate.

Vitamin supplements do not protect against lung cancer, according to a study of more than 77,000 vitamin users. In fact, some supplements may even increase the risk of developing it. These findings have broad public health implications, given the large population of current and former smokers and the widespread use of vitamin supplements.